


Endless Sea

by synfy



Category: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: Angst, Drabble, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, The Roof, and everything that goes along with that, basically andrew goes to the roof to be emo, i guess, tw: mentions of Drake
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-06
Updated: 2019-11-06
Packaged: 2021-01-24 00:49:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,636
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21329497
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/synfy/pseuds/synfy
Summary: Sometimes Andrew wonders if his teammates realise that he's not the only fucked up one on the team. Sometimes, he wonders if they realise that the whole team is, in fact, fucked up. That's why they're all on the team.Sometimes, it kind of bothers him that no one seems to remember that.
Relationships: Neil Josten/Andrew Minyard
Comments: 7
Kudos: 243





	Endless Sea

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Diving Bell by Starset cause it had andreil energies

Allison had said it jokingly, to Dan, in response to some comment Nicky had made. They’d been watching some sad movie, there was a dog in it, the dog had died, Andrew hadn’t been paying attention. He’d been on his phone, looking at the details of a new law that had been passed in Florida that allowed rapists to claim visitation. He’d been too fucking busy to care about the dead fictional pet of a whiny fictional boy. And then Allison decided to snipe at him. Three years ago, when he’d first come off the meds, the comment wouldn’t have bothered him one bit. Four years ago, when he’d still been on the meds, the comment wouldn’t even have registered.

“_I’ve never seen a single emotion from Andrew.”_

Andrew kicked his heel against the side of the building, and watched some sand that had been caked there dislodge. Given that he was at his usual spot on the roof of the dorms, the sand had probably come from his shoe to begin with anyway. He thought about lighting up a smoke, then quickly realised he’d left his pack in the bedroom downstairs. Maybe Neil would bring one up in a little bit. He wouldn’t count on it, though. It was the last night that the older Foxes were back to visit, so Neil would probably hang around them for as long as he could.

Shame. A cigarette would be nice.

He wasn’t even sure how he felt about the comment, an irony that wasn’t lost on him. It stuck around in the corners of his brain, hanging about like some sort of unwanted ghost that couldn’t remember what message it was supposed give back to the living.

It was partially true, he supposed. While it was much better now, after years of having Bee and Neil, his emotions still felt quantised and fuzzy. He could be annoyed, or not annoyed. Angry, or not angry. Bored, or not bored. Sometimes, on good days, he could even be content or interested. He could feel, just usually not very much, and that likely wouldn’t ever change. It was simply a fact of being himself.

He wondered if Allison even realised how much of Neil’s emotions were performative.

She’d never seen Andrew smile, but had she ever really noticed Neil’s? How sometimes, when he didn’t think anyone was looking, his smile went stale around the edges, like he’d frozen his cheeks and forgotten that he had an expression on at all. How his eyebrows quirked up when someone asked him if he was ok, because lifted eyebrows eased the hollows under his eyes. How, if you snuck up on him in an empty room, his face was completely still and flat, like a lake with no wind, not cold or warm or anything at all.

He wondered if Allison would ever joke about Neil like that if she knew, or if it was just reserved for him. She’d never really forgiven him for Seth, never mind that it hadn’t been his fault.

None of the upperclassmen had ever heard Andrew really laugh, and the rest of his family still flinched whenever they heard him. For Aaron and Nicky, he knew the only version of his laugh that they would ever be able to hear was his medicated one. Too high, too bright, too loud. For Nicky, his laugh would always mean bruises, clenched fists, and grinning teeth. For Kevin, it would always mean broken glass and a leering Riko. For Aaron, it would always mean _Drake._ Neil was the only one who didn’t react to his laugh beyond a quiet smile. Every time he laughed, they remembered, and then he remembered. He laughed, and it was like all progress he’d made into moving on was erased.

There wasn’t really anything good he could even say in response to Allison’s comment.

He could ask why she never noticed his few real emotions, but he knew why. She didn’t care enough to.

He could ask why she never noticed Neil’s fake emotions, but he knew that, too. She didn’t know enough to.

He could look her dead in the eyes and tell her _yes, you’re right, I don’t feel anything because they beat and medicated all of the feeling out of me and it was too dangerous to get my feelings back so I replaced them all with knives._ But only Neil would see the humor in that.

He could muster up everything he had and just start crying, but the Foxes would probably only be horrified and she’d start recording it. He didn’t actually know if he could force himself to cry, anyway.

He could simply state that he had emotions and move on, but there was still some little part of him that recoiled hard against such an admission, one that seemed so dangerous.

An even smaller part of him only laughed, and said she was right, and that he was simply deluding himself for thinking he could feel anything at all.

It was the same small part that had first formed when he was seven, and his foster father came bursting into his room in a rage after he’d gotten a shower, and ripped the towel down before shoving him onto a bed. The small part that had formed as his foster father’s ring clipped his forehead in the struggle and drew blood, when he realised what was about to happen, and then what was happening, and then what had happened. It was born of shock and fear and an overwhelming realisation that there was nothing he could, that he was far too weak, that his only choices were to die, or to bear it, because screaming didn’t work and his mother would never come. It was the same smallpart he’d allowed to take over when he realised that there was no Cass without Drake, and his choices were to give it all up, or cling to what he had until he bled and hope that he could keep the good. The same small part that eventually found joy in blood, that twisted something up inside his chest until the only thing he ever felt was the hot, tight bubble of something lodged in his throat that seemed to deflate when a razor drew an easy line across his skin.

It had gone away a little when he’d seen the flinch in Aaron’s hazed eyes whenever Tilda had walked towards him, but it had come right back when he saw his tears at her funeral. It had been replaced with a burning anger when he saw Nicky bloodied on the ground, and then the meds had turned everything into a lightshow of colour and sound and emotion that was perpetually out of his reach. But that small part always returned when he sobered up and came down.

He might have had a chance of fighting it off, Andrew thought, when he first came down off the meds. If it had been the original plan, and he’d come off in his fourth year with Neil alive by his side and Riko long dead, he might have been able to put that part of himself away for good.

But instead he came down with Drake fresh in his mind and familiar to his body, inside a locked building with countless powder-blue scrubs and dark green tracksuits that were barely different than orange jumpsuits. He came down to showers with no door but so, so many eyes, and roving gazes that burned paths across his arms, his hips, his thighs, his chest. He came down to Proust.

And so that small part of him returned. The part that he struggled to convince himself was a small piece of him, which was actually not small at all.

Behind him, the door opened. He didn’t startle, but it was a near thing. Neil’s footfalls were light, a easy way he had of gliding around on his toes that was borne of dodging men in the dead of night. Neil had very distinctive footsteps, and Andrew knew the sound by heart.

He was already reaching into his pocket as he sat down, keeping a careful few inches between their thighs. After a moment, he pulled out Andrew’s carton of cigarettes and offered one to him with careful fingers. Andrew accepted, and let their fingertips brush when he took it from Neil. Neil understood, and let his head fall back into a relaxed sigh as Andrew lit the end of the roll.

“Nicky caught Kevin drinking out of a flask after you left and decided that we all needed to play a drinking game to catch up. You know how that usually goes, half of them were already asleep when I left. Renee said she’d make sure everyone got into a bed.”

Andrew didn’t say anything, but took a drag. The smoke danced across his tongue, and then he let it spill out from his lips. It coiled into the air and floated away. Neil watched the smoke go, his eyes bright, his expression. Andrew lifted a hand to hover near his ear, and Neil leaned into his palm.

He blew a little puff of smoke into Neil’s eyes before dragging his fingers through Neil’s waves. The first time he’d done this, back in his second year, Neil’s hair had been tangled and wiry and a little oily, almost totally destroyed by years of constant dyeing and bleaching and redyeing. Now, after three years of being allowed to grow and heal, it was soft and thick and smooth. 

Neil opened his eyes and searched his expression before giving him a tiny, warm, knowing smile. “Yes or no?”

Instead of answering, Andrew leaned in, and let Neil feel the echo of a second smile against his lips.

**Author's Note:**

> This is just a thing I wrote to vent and project because someone said some shit to me earlier today and I've been pissed about it all day so I decided that if I have to mentally relive my problems and deal with the concept of emotions then Andrew has to also relive my problems and deal with the concept of emotions


End file.
